Central African Republic

A year ago, we polled Future Development bloggers for predictions on the coming year (2014). Looking back, we find that many unforeseen (and possibly unforeseeable) events had major economic impact.

We missed the developments in Ukraine and Russia, the spread of the Islamic State in Iraq, the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, the collapse in oil prices and their attendant effects on economic growth. At the same time, we picked the winner of the soccer World Cup, and got many of the technology trends right. Perhaps economists are better at predicting non-economic events.